Genre
Modern Fiction
Setting and Context
Canada, within a family of Chinese emigrees determined to erase any traces of their Asian heritage
Narrator and Point of View
The point of view is that of Peter, the only son of a dictatorial father and a passive mother, whose sense of self is wholly incompatible with the image of the son his parents are determined to produce.
Tone and Mood
Depressing and extraordinarily sad; combative
Protagonist and Antagonist
Peter is the protagonist, his father the antagonist
Major Conflict
There is constant conflict between Peter and his father; his father demands that his son be the archetypal "all American boy" and his son does not feel as though he is meant to be a boy at all, but wants only to be a woman.
Climax
The climax of the novel sees Peter leaving home to go to Montreal where he enters a relationship with a woman who is seeking to disprove her own homosexuality by having an affair with him.
Foreshadowing
The fact that Peter wants to be a woman foreshadows the fact that he will have to leave home in order to have any kind of life outside of his father's influence.
Understatement
Peter's father is said to be patriarchal, which really understates the fact that he is a demanding and judgmental bully.
Allusions
Peter's father alludes to his idea of what a Western man should be and tries to shape Peter into this mold accordingly.
Imagery
There are no long descriptive passages in the book that provoke any specific visual images for the reader. The majority of the imagery relates to emotional feeling and the way in which the author makes the reader hear the vicious tones of Peter's father's voice and feel empathy for the indecision that he is experiencing.
Paradox
Peter's father wants to erase any evidence of his Asian past but the paradox is that he is the archetypal Chinese stereotype in that he values male children more than female, demands his way or the highway kind of behaviors and sets unattainable standards for his son to achieve. He is also a quiet civil servant with a servile wife.
Parallelism
There is a parallel between Peter, who is searching for his gender identity, and his evangelical Christian lover who is trying to disprove her lesbian identity by having an affair with a young man.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The émigré community is the term used to encompass all of the Chinese-Canadian families referenced in the book.
Personification
no specific examples
